I'm reading an article a co-worker gave me that I'm having difficulty understanding. It is called "The information-seeking behaviour of the virtual scholar: from use to users" by David Nicholas. On the third page, it describes one of the traits of online searchers, and that is their promiscuity. I do a lot of online searching, so does that make me promiscuous?
Okay, so this word doesn't have to involve sex. Dictionary.com also has definitions that include without discrimination, haphazard.
Even as a professional researcher, I also do a lot of searching that is haphazard, and I bounce in and out of sites. I'm wondering if this is avoidable on the Internet or within a scholarly database. Even when I am searching for articles, I may get into the abstract page or the article itself, and quickly realize it isn't relevant.
But is this really so different than print? If I am looking in books, I may pull ten books off the shelf, and realize only three are at all relevant.
Does any of this really matter... I guess that's the final question.
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It matters not to me...
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